Ellen Giduz

Management of the Davidson and Cornelius public library branches will be consolidated under a single branch manager beginning Monday as part of a major restructuring at the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County.

Ellen Giduz, a Davidson resident and Cornelius branch manager since June 2007, will take on added responsibility for the Davidson branch next week, library officials said Friday. The change is part of a restructuring that is sending Davidson’s branch manager, Nancy Dishman, to Huntersville, just months before her planned retirement.

Nancy Dishman

As part of a major restructuring at the library system, Ms. Dishman is being transferred to North County Regional Library, on Statesville Road in Huntersville. There, she will keep her title and pay grade of library supervisor while working as manager of the information services department, spokeswoman Cordelia Anderson said Friday.

Ms. Dishman was off Friday. Her last day working at the Davidson branch will be Saturday.

The Davidson library, on the Village Green, currently has five employees, including Ms. Dishman. Beginning Monday, the library will get an extra full-time library assistant, and Ms. Giduz will assume oversight for the branch. Ms. Giduz is expected to divide her time between Davidson and Cornelius.

The new library assistant, who has not been named, will be moving to Davidson from the North County branch. Cornelius also will get another librarian, also from the North  County branch.

The public library system would not make Ms. Giduz available for comment Friday afternoon. In a press release issued late Friday, she is quoted as saying: “I’m excited about joining the wonderful staff and volunteers in providing a full array of library services to the Davidson community. Since moving to Davidson in 1981, I have watched the area grow, but one thing that has never changed is Davidson’s devotion to its library. I feel a strong responsibility to ensure that we continue to respond to the evolving needs of the town.”

Ms. Giduz has worked for the library system since January 2006. She has an undergraduate degree in psychiatric nursing from Duke University, a master’s degree in library science from Emory University, and an MA and PhD in English from the University of North Carolina.

Before joining the library, she worked more than 20 years at Davidson College in a variety of positions, including librarian and faculty member.

CONCERNS ABOUT SHIFT

Ms. Dishman’s departure has aroused some concern among co-workers and longtime library patrons.

In a letter to DavidsonNews.net Monday, resident Sauni Wood noted that the change means Ms. Dishman will not be able to retire from the branch she has managed for years. “Administratively, it doesn’t make sense to me or her colleagues,” Ms. Wood wrote.

Ms. Wood urged residents to call or email library executives in hopes of reversing the decision to move Ms. Dishman. But library officials said there were no plans to alter the shift, which is one of 27 personnel related actions forming a sort of “domino chain” that would be difficult to reverse.

David Singleton, the system’s director of library experiences, told one resident in email message that he had not known of Ms. Dishman’s retirement plans. “Unfortunately, we were not aware of Nancy’s intended retirement until the announcement of her move. My understanding is that Nancy’s retirement date is not yet certain, as of this week,” Mr. Singleton said in an email to resident Jerry Sloan.

In his email to Mr. Sloan, Mr. Singleton praised Ms. Dishman, saying “Davidson is a great example of a library at the center of its community, and Nancy has been responsible for much of that happening.”

He noted that Ms. Giduz is a Davidson resident. “We also made a great effort to ensure that someone with an understanding and appreciation of the Davidson community will lead the branch.”

BIG RESTRUCTURING

Ms. Anderson said the 27 staff transfers are part of an internal restructuring called “Imagine 2010” that the library has been working on since 2006.  She said all the transfers are “lateral moves” for the employees, since the system is under a hiring freeze and is not permitted to reclassify staff.

Besides the Davidson manager shift, she said the following changes were in the works:

• 3 Senior Library Managers will move to Main from North County, Independence and Freedom. In their new roles, they will provide system leadership under Library Experiences Director David Singleton. They will each oversee a group of branches and supervise those branch managers.
• As these 3 Senior Library Managers move to Main, 3 Library Managers at North County, Independence and Freedom who have been serving as department managers will become branch managers.
• 3 Library Managers who have been serving as interim managers will become permanent managers at these locations: University, Morrison, and South County.